Magneto-Optical Trap for Polar Molecules

Understand

We propose a method for laser cooling and trapping a substantial class of polar molecules, and in particular titanium (II) oxide (TiO).

• This method uses pulsed electric fields to nonadiabatically remix the ground-state magnetic sublevels of the molecule, allowing us to build a magneto-optical trap (MOT) based on a quasi-cycling $J'=J"-1$ transition.
• Monte-Carlo simulations of this electrostatically remixed MOT (ER-MOT) demonstrate the feasibility of cooling TiO to a temperature of 10 $\mathrm{\mu}K$ and trapping it with a radiation-pumping-limited lifetime on the order of 80 ms.